Historical background of the plantation era

Upland or green seeded cotton was not a commercially important crop until the invention of an improved
cotton gin in 1793. With an inexpensive cotton gin a man could remove seed from as much cotton in one day as a woman could de-seed in two months working at a rate of about one pound per day.[7] The newly mechanized cotton industry in England during the
Industrial Revolution absorbed the tremendous supply of cheap cotton that became a major crop in the Southern U.S.

At the time of the cotton gin’s invention, the sub tropical soils in the Eastern U.S. were becoming depleted, and the fertilizer deposits of guano deposits of South America and the Pacific Islands along with the nitrate deposits in the Chilean deserts were not yet being exploited, meaning that there were fertilizer shortages, leading to a decline in agriculture in the Southeast and a westward expansion to new land.

Transportation at the time was extremely limited. There were almost no improved roads in the U.S. or in the Louisiana Territory and the first railroads were not built until the 1830s.[8]
The only practical means for shipping agricultural products more than a few miles without exceeding their value was by water. This made much of the land in the U.S. unsuitable for growing crops other than for local consumption.

The
Napoleonic Wars and the
Embargo Act of 1807 restricted European trade, which did not recover until the end of the
War of 1812 in 1815. The
Year without a summer of 1816 resulted in
famine in Europe and a wave of immigration to the U.S., with New Orleans being the destination of many
refugees. The return of good harvests in Europe along, with the newly cleared and planted land in the
Midwest and
Mississippi River Valley and improvements in transportation, resulted in a collapse in agricultural prices that caused the 1818-19
depression. Agricultural
commodity prices remained depressed for many years, but their eventual recovery resulted in a new wave of land clearing, which in turn triggered another depression in the late 1830s.
Cotton prices were particularly depressed.[9]

Until the development of the
steamboat, transportation of goods on major rivers was generally accomplished either with
barges or
flatboats, floated downstream or pushed upstream with poles or by hand using overhanging tree limbs. On the Mississippi River, most shipping was down river on log
rafts or wooden boats that were dismantled and sold as lumber in the vicinity of New Orleans.
Steam-powered river
navigation began in 1811-12, between
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and New Orleans. Inland steam navigation rapidly expanded in the following decades.
Railroads appeared before the
Civil War, though at first were used to link
waterways. After the Civil War, railroads took over most of the hauling of goods.

It was during the period of expanding steam transportation that
plantation agriculture dominated the Southern economy, with two-thirds of the
millionaires in the U.S. living in Louisiana, mostly between
Natchez, Mississippi, and New Orleans. The surviving plantation homes range from relatively modest dwellings to opulent
mansions, some containing original furnishings and many with period furniture.

Due to poor transportation and slow industrialization, plantations tended to be somewhat self-sufficient, growing most of their own food, harvesting their own
timber and firewood, repairing farm implements, and constructing their own buildings. Many slaves were skilled
blacksmiths,
masons, and
carpenters who were often contracted out. Cloth, shoes, and clothing were imported from Europe and from the Northeast U.S.

The self-sufficiency of plantations and cheap slave labor hindered economic development of the South. Contemporary descriptions cite the lack of towns, commerce, and economic development.

Besides the necessity of river transportation, the ground near the rivers and old
river channels contained the best agricultural land, where the
sandy and
silty soil settled, increasing the height of the natural
levees. The
clay soil settled farther away from the rivers and being less stable, it slumped to muddy back-
swamps.[10] The plantations in the vicinity of
St. Francisville, Louisiana, are on a high
bluff on the east side of the Mississippi River with
loess soil, which was not as fertile as the river
alluvium, but was relatively well-suited to plantation agriculture.

Slave housing

Examples of slave housing at Laura and San Francisco plantations are wooden buildings with two or three separate rooms, including the kitchen, and furnished with one or more
bedsteads and a few other pieces of furniture. These were intended to house a single family.

Contemporary accounts of slave housing described it as being better than that of many free white laborers in the U.S.[11]